While we're not always fans of made-up genres, which we know is ironic since we make up LOTS of genres, some rankle more than others. The most obvious being 'metal-gaze'. And what's even worse is when one catches on to the point that you sort of HAVE to use it. We've used metal-gaze once or twice, but we much prefer genres like doomdeathdrone or wooden metal.
Gaze is probably the most abused descriptor suffix in made up genres, anything slightly blissy or blown out gets tagged with the -gaze suffix. Rockabilly-gaze, adult contemporary-gaze. Sound silly yeah? Well, metal-gaze is not all that different. But recently a handful of our favorite bands all gathered under a new genre, one we're sort of tickled by, and might be forced to appropriate. SHITGAZE. How great is that, blissy and druggy, but lo-fi and crappy sounding. Times New Viking. Psychedelic Horseshit. Total shitgaze. Got a nice ring to it, pretty evocative, and not all that far off the mark. So the latest band we feel belongs among the ranks of the shitgaze elite is the awesomely named Eat Skull from Portland, who offer up the same sort of fractured damaged noise drenched pop as TNV and PH, but with their own twist. They definitely sound a bit like the bastard sons of vintage Guided By Voices, there is some solid hook filled pop in these here tracks, but it's nearly obscured by super jagged crumbling distorted guitars, howled vocals recorded into a dictaphone, trash can drums, all recorded so in-the-red, your speakers might melt. The thing about Eat Skull is they seem less arty and more punky, more rambunctious and random. Offering up spurts of furious noisepunk one minute, weird twangy jangle the next, then some awesome perfect pop the next, but always buried under layers of grit and buzz and tape hiss, fuzz all over the place, tons of high end, as if the bass knob was broken off so they just replaced it with ANOTHER treble knob, thick swaths of surfy organ, blown out until it's a wall of warbly sound, lots of random tape loops everywhere, overdubbed vocals way up in the mix, totally unhinged and off kilter and ultra chaotic, but catchy and wild and sweaty and over the top and fun as fuck!
For fans of the above mentioned bands as well as stuff like Sic Alps, Oh Sees, Coachwhips, Strapping Fieldhands.
ALL HAIL THE NEW WAVE OF SHITGAZE!
Now on vinyl, once again! England's snotty teenage first-generation punks get their due with this nice vinyl reissue of their insanely enjoyable album, The Album. Never the smartest of the punk scene (they literally were snotty little teens), the band still possessed undeniable songwriting chops, influenced by the glammy side of Bowie, the Velvet Underground, and the rest of the usual suspects. Above all, Eater are super charged and out of control fun, and the boundless enthusiasm of their work has held up surprisingly well over the years.
Here's our review of the cd reissue that came out last year:
Maybe not the most important nor most influential '77 punk band from the UK, no, but definitely one of our personal all time faves! And Eater were both one of the earliest (forming in '76, debuting with a single in March '77) and youngest (they were literally schoolboys, their drummer Dee Generate was only 13 years old!). That's pretty punk, innit? Being snotty and pissed off wasn't a problem for them. Neither was writing high energy, highly catchy tunes that usually did the dirty deed in under two minutes, tops. Gotta love the poppy punk power of tracks like "Public Toys", "Room For One", and their age-adjusted Alice Cooper cover, "Fifteen". They also covered tracks by T-Rex, David Bowie, and the Velvet Underground, always infusing 'em with their own teenaged punk 'tude. Which admittedly (and not unexpectedly, giving their age/testosterone combo) gets a little un-PC on their own "Get Raped", though that's still a catchy number too... Maybe you've heard the Sex Pistols a few too many times, but probably not Eater.
Maybe not the most important nor most influential '77 punk band from the UK, no, but definitely one of our personal all time faves! And Eater were both one of the earliest (forming in '76, debuting with a single in March '77) and youngest (they were literally schoolboys, their drummer Dee Generate was only 13 years old!). That's pretty punk, innit? Being snotty and pissed off wasn't a problem for them. Neither was writing high energy, highly catchy tunes that usually did the dirty deed in under two minutes, tops. Gotta love the poppy punk power of tracks like "Public Toys", "Room For One", and their age-adjusted Alice Cooper cover, "Fifteen". They also covered tracks by T-Rex and the Velvet Underground, always infusing 'em with their own teenaged punk 'tude. Which admittedly (and not unexpectedly, giving their age/testosterone combo) gets a little un-PC on their own "Get Raped", though that's still a catchy number too...
They're all here, 'cause this comprehensive Eater anthology consists of their album, The Album, and a bonus disc collecting their singles cuts. Maybe you've heard the Sex Pistols a few too many times, but probably not Eater. We're pretty stoked to have this new reissue to recommend. Get it!!
Kollaps. The first album from Einsturzende Neubauten, released back in 1981, found the band as a trio with the wild-throated frontman Blixa Bargeld buttressed by the anarcho-rhythmicists N.U. Unruh and F.M. Einheit. The band photo of Neubauten on Kollaps is quite telling, as a it parodies Pink Floyd's grand collection of instruments that emblazoned the back cover of Ummagumma. Instead of the marching band sized collection of drums and mallets, there's an assortment of hammers, pipes, a couple of drills, a cheap looking synth, an ax (yeah, there is a guitar, but there's also an ax!), and sheet metal twisted in the shape of drumheads. These are the instruments that Neubauten uses in the hyper-primitive, industrial-punk tracks found on Kollaps. Neubauten's amplified junkyard was a clearly a bold statement of DIY primitivism, this trio was not without their structural prowess, crafting anthemic blasts out of their rhythmic churns, bristling with sparkplug noise and rabid distortion. "Tanz Debil" is curiously catchy in its amplified shopping cart bashing which Unruh & Einheit hammer out to accompany the demon-then-zombie vocal delivery from Blixa Bargeld. The title track is a 8 minute monochord mantra, and the band actually pulls off an instrumental cover of Serge Gainsbourg's "Je T'Aime." Very rough around the edges, but there is a serious-minded, infernal poetry of pain, anger, and rage focused through these scrap metal arrangements. It's great to have this in stock, as Kollaps is a tremendous record.
Totally something we should have expected that reissue specialists Superior Viaduct would get to sooner or later, 'cause it's very much up their, uh, viaduct, and yep here it is - a retrospective compilation from seminal raw weirdo almost-avant-garde punks the Electric Eels! Proto-punks, really, as the band started in '72, and broke up in '76, with all their releases being posthumous ones.
We'll now repurpose a bunch of what we wrote about the band when a previous, now out of print anthology came out some years ago... The Electric Eels were the undisputed bad boy kings of Ohio punk, spitting out snarled three minute blasts of noisy, clumsy, snotty '70s punk rock, sounding like a retarded Black Flag, which is a *good* thing. Super distorted and super whiny, these Cleveland fuck-ups made fellow Ohioans Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys look and sound like choir boys. Magnets for trouble, the Eels attracted cops and fist fights and rowdy crowds like shit attracts flies, resulting in inter-band squabbles, drunken half sets, and mucho club destruction. The thing was, even though these guys could barely play, they wrote amazingly catchy songs and what they lacked in skill they made up for with attitude. Songs like "You're Full Of Shit" are relentless, hook filled pop gems, dipped in shit and sprinkled with garbage, that still somehow came out smelling like roses. The Electric Eels are what all punk rock should sound like - catchy, heavy, loud, funny and most importantly not pretentious. Completely essential, fucked up, PUNK ROCK.
This vinyl-only Superior Viaduct collection, 13 tracks in all, contains such Eels essentials as "Agitated", "Cyclotron", "Sewercide", and "Jaguar Ride", and features liner notes by punk rock scholar Jon Savage.
FYI, Superior Viaduct have also just reissued the Electric Eels' killer 2nd single, "Spin Age Blasters/Bunnies", available separately, we've got those too (the tracks from their first single are on this Die Electric Eels comp, btw).
The Electric Eels were the undisputed bad boy kings of Ohio punk spitting out snarled three minute blasts of noisy, clumsy, snotty seventies punk rock sounding like a retarded Black Flag, which is a *good* thing. Super distorted and super whiny, these Cleveland fuck-ups made fellow Ohioans Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys look and sound like choir boys. Magnets for trouble, the Eels attracted
So, now that we've established that you should probably buy this, which format to get? Well, the LP has six tracks different from or missing from the cd, and also sports extra liner notes and a different cover. At first we weren't sure how essential this was since there was another Eels collection released not too long ago, but eleven of the tracks on the cd are previously unreleased, and there are a few more unreleased/alternate versions on the double LP!
Yeah! Here's another rad reissue of early '70s proto-metal. Of special interest to us, Elonkorjuu are Finnish, in fact hailing from the same town, Pori, that later gave us AQ faves Circle!
Their ultra-collectable 1972 album Harvest Time is a heavy progressive gem, full of ripping guitar and wild organ... wailing English-language vocals, melodic moody parts, many mathy changes, and galloping riffage are also all elements of the sometimes complex Elonkorjuu equation. Although fairly heavy for the time, they also have a generally "happy" sound, one that's often hectic too, these guys obviously reveling in their music making prowess. Their fervor is infectious, this is great stuff for anyone who loves other early '70s prog-psych acts of this ilk like Trettioariga Kriget, Wishbone Ash, Cargo, Culpeper's Orchard, Murphy Blend, Steamhammer, Wind, Irish Coffee, Osage Tribe, Odmenn, Blues Addicts, Stonewall, Toad, Road, etc.
While they only recorded one more album in the late '70s, the talent and exuberance displayed on Harvest Time earned 'em (and Finland) a spot in early, obscure hard rock history, for sure. Forever underground, they even title a song here "Praise To Our Basement", wherein these young long haired hippies first had first begun jamming back in '69...
Oh, how we still love Alec Empire. We just can't help it. We loved (and heck, still love) DHR so much. Atari Teenage Riot, Shizuo, Fever, EC8OR, Patric Catani, Bomb 20, for a while we were downright obsessed with all that stuff. Like all things new and exciting though, Empire and his crew sort of lost their relevance, their silly sloganeering, rehashed metal riffs, pummelling drum beats and screecheed vocals became more tired and boring than thrilling. Some stuff Like Empire's Destoyer stood the test of time a little better, but as music got more extreme, that whole DHR thing just didn't seem so badass. So the return of Alec Empire, could've been a sad rehash, but guess what, he's managed to knock us for a loop again. Your fist hint is Empire on the sleeve toting a guitar case, but Futurist is all ROCK. And heavy too. A super aggressive pounding metallic garage punk stomp. At times it sounds a but like Ministry or what we WISH Nine Inch Nails sounded like, which is hard to avoid when you're talking pounding beats and metal guitars, but it also sounds like the Hives or the Refused, super charged and slightly DHR-ed (some of the drum fills become that instantly recognizable DHR digital drill) A few tracks do slow down into chugging punk rock dirges and sound like some fucked up take on Fear or Fang or Flipper. But for the most part this is wild and sweaty, kick ass metallic garage stomp future rock. And we LOVE it.
Brand new vinyl only, ultra heavy match up between NY's low end doom metal titans Unearthly trance, and Canadian powerviolence grind duo The Endless Blockade. Unearthly Trance go first, and fill up a whole side at 33 rpm, of their roiling doomic dirgery, thick downtuned riffage, bellowed howls, the sound epic and majestic and blackened, like a crustier version of Mastodon or Neurosis, that same sort of mighty bludgeon, but here sprawled into something way more abstract, with the track drifting fro, churning crush to loose doomy drift, with creepy tangled minor key melodies, a gorgeous and haunting, repeating motif, ominously intoned vocals, it sounds like the track will eventually erupt into more heaviness, but instead it goes the opposite direction, or at least explores a different kind of heaviness, breaking down into a long stretch of ambient dronemusic, a shadow of that original riff/motif remains, ghostlike, the track shimmering and slithering and evolving into a sort of ultra doom dirge, spacious and spare, a spaced out plod, that gradually grows more and more abstract before dissipating completely.
On the flip, Endless Blockade temper their usually furious flurries with some lumbering riffage and almost doomy drift, beginning with a dense cloud of glitched out electronics and feedback drenched shrieked vocals, before exploding into a face melting wall of blasting powerviolence crush. Flurries of frenzied drumblast, insane insectoid riffage, dueling grunted/howled vox, a furious grind wrapped in thick swaths of swirling noise, occasionally slipping into something a bit more dirgey or doomy, but eventually erupting back into some seriously aggro pummel. Their side finishes off with a dense and intense abstract noise squall, all grinding and crumbling in-the-red buzz and skree, tangled vocal freakouts, and then finally a strangely pretty field recorded ambient outro.
Killer power violence tag team, in one corner, newbies The Endless Blockade, who more than almost any current band embody the sound and spirit of classic power violence, and in the other, the grandfathers, and direct descendants of the genre's namesake, Bastard Noise, who have returned to the sound of their Man Is The Bastard antecedents, while still incorporating plenty of twisted Bastard noise noise.
We haven't heard Bastard Noise sound this fierce and heavy in years, throbbing low slung bass, pounding caveman drums, howled feral vox, wild screeches, tangled riffs, all woven into tightly wound tarpit grind jams, lurching and stuttering, stop start, freaked out blasts of furious thrash bookended by lumbering doomy crush, all shot through with streaks of electronic skree, clouds of glitched out FX, in fact, if anything this sounds like the perfect mix of classic Man Is The Bastard and another aQ fave MITB offshoot, Geronimo: rhythmic, hypnotic, cyclical. There are some moments of droned out Bastard Noise electronics, but those moments usually end up exploding into shards of hyper rhythmic pound and chug. So awesome. This would be worth it alone for the Bastard Noise side, but we haven't even gotten to the best part of this split...
Which is "Advanced Directive", an Endless Blockade remix by legendary academic electronic pioneer Noah Creshevsky (we had a killer retrospective of his work on Japanese label EM!), that is a total skittery, stuttery, psychedelic plunderphonic freakout. Riffs and vocals chopped and looped and pitch shifted and reassembled into a weirdly hiccupping experimental power violence mash up, reminds us a little bit of the recent Record Of The Week by Whourkr, with its impossibly complex and head spinning heaviness. Wow. The fourteen minute track that precedes it is a killer too, pummeling, pounding doomic heaviness, that slips into a strange electronic flecked trip out breakdown, and then a super in-the-red grinding buzz drenched feedback slathered noise freakout, before lurching back into some riffy crunch to finish things off.
There is one more track, a remix by noisemaker The Rita, but that one is for the TRUE noise lovers only, 15 minutes of crumbling, blown out, earshredding Merzbowian digicrunch.
To a certain degree, Endless Humiliation sound pretty much exactly what a band called Endless Humiliation -should- sound like. The review we read described EH as a mix of Ildjarn and Hijokaidan, which was enough for us to track some of these down. And heck, that's not all that far off the mark.
A total face melting wall of blacknoise, a continuous blastbeat beneath a churning, ever shifting sea of harsh hissing buzz, blown out circuit blowing distortion, crumbling clouds of processed vocal chaos, thick sheets of feedback, this is definitely NOISE, but that damn drum beat, and we seem to hear riffs, whether they're there or not, this is the sort of thing that puts all those other noisy black metal bands to shame. For Endless Humiliation, noise is an instrument, with which they craft some virulent and abject black fury.
Blasting crusty D-beat style drumming, pounding away beneath a cloud of Merzbowian freakout, shrieking vox, guitars? Maybe, but if so, they've been melted down and poured over the speakers, the sound shifts dramatically and fantastically throughout, from gritty and lo-fi, to brittle and tinny, to thick and corrosive to muted and washed out to sharp and jagged, and those drums just keep pounding away, the whole record throbbing and churning and heaving, we hear Dead C, Prurient, Akitsa, Bone Awl, Malveillance, Hijokaidan, Incapacitants, lots and lots of blasting pounding rrrrrrooooooaaaaaaar. But amidst all this noisiness and brutality and mayhem, there are some seriously sublime moments, like halfway through side two, when the sounds all lock tight into this high end drone, the drums an insanely repetitive metronomic plod, the guitars or synths or whatever the fuck is making that racket coalesce into a near static sheet of high end buzz, the whole thing managing to somehow sound more than noisy, tense, intense and dramatic. Oh and noisy. Totally killer. Noisefreaks will need this for SURE. Metalheads who like their blasting and thrashing just dripping with blown out buzz, and spewing white hot gouts of in-the-red NOISE, well then this is for you too.
Wicked packaging, hand silkscreened on thick cardstock, super striking, inside and out, comes with one photocopied insert, and one full color insert. And pretty sure it's crazy limited too...
Yup, the '80s have been 'back' for a while, haven't they? Each day an old new wave-y trend rears its head, but you might question if some of 'em should've been left alone and undisturbed. While many elements of the Epoxies' aesthetic might fall in that category -- theirs is an almost cartoonish rendering of '80s schtick, decked out in plastic sci-fi goggles, duct tape, blinding neon hues, quirky pseudonyms (Shock Diode, Ray Cathode, FM Static and Doctor Grip... ahh, there was always, inexplicably a token doctor in '80s band lineups, wasn't there? but he was always the keyboard player... this guy's the drummer! wtf?) and a key-tar (y'know the keyboard that you wear like a guitar) -- it's hard to resist their sincere, high spirited, retro-futuristic romp... and why should you anyways?! Their effervescent self-titled debut a couple of years ago kept spirits high around these parts for quite a while. Very inspired by the likes of Blondie, Kim Wilde, Josie Cotton. Now, it might be just our imagination but it sounds as though the band have 'Fat'tened (haha!) and punked up their sound even more for their debut on Fat Wreck Chords. Fat Mike even produced it! So they're not as alien a presence among the rest of that label's roster as we'd anticipated, and actually pulls them more in line with the likes of the Muffs. Stop The Future oozes with suburban-teens-hangin'-out-at-the-mall nostalgia. With lead singer Roxy singing about radiation, TV sets, living on video, and dreaming of microwaves, it's ripe for a new John Hughes movie soundtrack. One thing that's particularly noticeable is that she's singing in a broader range, taking a deeper tone on a few songs, providing a darker counterpart to the boys' still peppy as fuck backing vocals, crunchy guitar, bass, bubblegum synths and drums. Gotta give 'em props too for covering the Scorpions' cool tune "Robot Man" so thoroughly that Roxy even sings the word "vision" as Klaus Meine does... "wishun"! Yay! The album's final song takes a turn into an unexpected different but no less '80s-y zone -- very Erasure style synth pop! We'll leave it up to you to decide if that's a good or bad thing. They're certainly a band you've gotta see live to experience their totally rad fun energy, but this album does come very close. A great summer album!
If you've still got a lil' soft spot in your heart for the energetic, bubblegum-snappin' new wave sparkplugs like Josie Cotton or Kim Wilde, you don't wanna miss the Epoxies from Portland, OR. They are a bazooka blast of '80s good times. Brightly hued, skinny-tied, stripe-y legged, duct-tape accessorized and kooky pseudonymed. So very John Hughes teen movie soundtrack perfect, you can almost imagine them rockin' out a version of Karla DeVito's Breakfast Club hit "We Are Not Alone". No, they're not bringing anything new to the table, but they certainly write ultra-catchy, snappy tunes. Super earnest, enthusiastic and a bit geeky, it's as if a time machine plucked them right out of '85. Full of punchy-crunchy guitar, squidgy-weeny keyboards and sorta-yodelled oh-eee-oh-eee-oh backing vocals. Lead singer Roxy Epoxy possesses such the perfect pipes to capture the poppy, punky spirit - running from Dale Bozzio's hiccup-squeak to Ms Wilde's more throaty delivery - that we can forgive the somewhat off-kilter boy vocals of keyboardist Fritz M. Static. Heck, if the Muffs hadn't already beat them to it, they'd probably do a bang-up job covering "Kids In America". C'mon, can't ya feel that ol' herky jerk pogo dance a-twitchin' in your bones? Don't deny it. Join me on this one!
It's been a few years since Erase Errata's dazzling "Crystal Ships" and since then they've lost band member Sara Jaffe, toyed with the replacing her with another person, then wisely decided to forge ahead as a trio and keep the original EE spirit alive. This is their first outing for Kill Rock Stars and it's definitely a perfect fit. As their politics and guitars are sounding as sharp, angular, and urgent as ever. While they have always held their politics close to their hearts, on Nightlife they are even more up front and in command with pointed words backed up by tough sounding guitars. This is a much leaner meaner sounding Erase Errata. While many of their contemporaries have gotten softer, fluffier, more primed for MTV, we're happy to say that EE is keeping it real and as always with them so irresistibly passionate. Punk rock may have fallen in the hands of some pretty half hearted unimaginative folks over the years but Erase Errata are here to show us that the possibility and potential of punk can still pack a brilliant punch!
When we ordered this Japanese import, we were like, a split release between Japanese psychedelic stoner/doom rockers Eternal Elysium and San Francisco's own metalcore two-piece Black Cobra? Gotta get that! When it showed up, we were surprised to discover that the entire Black Cobra half had exactly the same tracks as those found on their recent full-length Feather And Stone, which we've already reviewed and raved about. Whoops. So... some of you already have that. However, if you want to get it again, you'll also get 23 minutes of Eternal Elysium material that only appears here. More likely, this is a good call for those who haven't yet picked up the Black Cobra album and also like (or think they might like) EE. Or simply for EE fans who don't mind getting the Black Cobra stuff as well (why would you?) as a bonus. Even at the import price, it's still 2 for the price of 2 (or 1.5 more like it) on one handy disc, not too shabby of a deal, really. So, let's say somethin' about the music for those ignorant of EE and/or BC:
Eternal Elysium always has us a little confused. Strange band. Sometimes they're straight up Sabbath-meets-grunge complete with vocals hinting at Alice In Chains or Soundgarden... and then there's the NWOBHM influences... and the groovy retro-sixties stuff... that's all here, plus of course random weirdness like the brief track "Golden Seaweed", with sped-up chipmunk voices. They try hard to make a stoner drug thing you wouldn't understand, but certainly something that fans of Boris, Solar Anus, and Church Of Misery should check into, to rock out to.
As to the BC half, here's what we said about Feathers And Stone before: Two man heavy riff-machine Black Cobra return with another pummeling release... Picking up right where Bestial left off, Feather And Stone shreds from the start. Brutally punishing circular riffs, heavy as all hell doomy moments, throat ripping screams, and incredibly hard hitting and precise drums. The fact that this massive sound comes from two fellas is pretty damn amazing. The album has all kinds of peaks and valleys. Amidst the constant time signature shifting, and brain-burning riff heavitude, there are a couple of beautifully dark intros and outros thrown in, giving the album a very balanced feeling. But it's mostly just crushingly heavy and ripping. If you can imagine a heavier, much more misanthropic Karp, that's kind of what they remind us of. Feather And Stone is a must for anybody needing a little taste of thrashing triumphant, sometimes doomy and dark, sometimes fast and techy, but always heavy and punk as fuck ROCK music... For fans of Cavity, Karp, Floor, Torche, and things that kill shit! (Note though that unlike the domestic edition of the BC album, there's no cd-rom live footage included.)
Ba-booom! This a Nardwuar The Human Serviette alert! A short dose is contained on this here record - a split 7" between Nardwuar's band The Evaporators and a certain Andrew W.K.
Yeah, we were sort of braced when this showed up. Can you say "Gung ho!"? Two irrepressible individuals and their respective cohorts go toe to toe, wreaking some good ol' garage rock havoc. Mr. W.K. covers two awesome songs by two awesome Canadian bands, punk rock legends Vancouver's Subhumans and the mighty Toronto duo The Leather Uppers. It's a relatively stripped down W.K. compared to his stadium rock persona of yore, but it's no less bombastic. Nardwuar and co. tackle a tune by obscure Montrealers Les Hou-Lops as well as deliver one of their own, the sillily juvenilely titled "The Bombs In My Pants". If you're seeking a ridiculous fun listen and some extremely obscure pop trivia, this is for you! Bonus "treats": a brief clip of Nardwuar interviewing W.K. as well as a printed insert that verges on old school obsessive zine-ish-ness documenting among other things the coming together of the two. Actually, attempting to read the tiny solidly packed text will probably take longer than listening to these five songs!
Ian Mackaye threw us all for an unexpected but delightful loop a couple years ago with the debut offering from his new project with longtime Dischord cohort Amy Farina (ex-Warmers). Fugazi and Minor Threat fans weren't met with loud guitars and screaming vocals but instead really insightful and melodic pop songs that proved turning down didn't mean losing spirit. In fact it once again demonstrates the sensitivity and awareness that was always one of Fugazi's best attributes too. Get Evens is the second album from The Evens and while the debut seemed to focus more on personal topics this time out politics rise right to the surface. But really if we're going to hear protest songs at a time like this we'll gladly listen to Mackaye's. Living In DC for as long as they have it would be impossible not to be reminded on a daily basis of your neighbors in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Ian and Amy would like many of those neighbors to go far, far away and it's certainly not hard to understand why. While we find ourselves a little more drawn to their debut, this is still a strong offering. With the future of Fugazi quite unclear we're happy that Ian's found a new outlet for his passion. And by all means go see the Evens live the next time they play an all-ages show in your town for six bucks. Their show a couple years back here in SF at the Swedish American Hall was such an uplifting and inspiring night that it still holds a special place in our hearts.
More amazing New York metalcore. Every Time I die play ultra heavy metal (very little 'core to be found here) with weird time signatures and off kilter rhythms. While their sound is similar to their contemporaries (Deadguy, Kiss It Goodbye, Coalesce) they
The Ex, maybe the Netherlands' most famous punk export, return with a new record of their unique churning, sinewy brand of punk angularity, but with a sound even more subdued than their previous release on Touch & Go, "Starters Alternators". If you're looking for the fury and rage of The Ex, definitely look to their earlier works. Much like their fellow hardcore vets Fugazi and
** MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT **
** MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT **
** MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT **
Okay, as always, that's just for the Mississippi obsessed out there, which we know, is a LOT of you, so you need not read further, just add one of these to your cart, and move on, but for the rest of us, please read on, we're so psyched to finally write up and list what is probably our favorite Ex record ever.
For Scrabbling At The Lock, Dutch aggro punks The Ex teamed up with NY cellist Tom Cora, a downtown scene veteran, who played with John Zorn and the usual suspects, and sadly passed away in 1998 at the age of 44.
The Ex, as much as we always wanted to dig them, were often a little to frantic and spiky for our tastes, a relentless barrage of bristly cacophony and tangled manic melodies, but somehow, teamed with Cora, the mix was magical, his fluid melodies, perfectly complimented the Ex's excesses, often taking a back seat, locking into propulsive laid back rhythms, and letting Cora's cello sing. It's been years since we've heard this (the cd now goes for crazy $$), but it sounds as amazing, as vibrant and emotional and dramatic as it ever did.
The Ex, for those who have not heard them, play a sort of wild punk rock gypsy folk, angular and sinewy, wild and free, very rhythmic, shouted vocals, intense percussion, one of the longest running DIY musical outfits still going, always pushing boundaries, most recently collaborating with Ethiopian musicians, bringing many of them to Europe to perform outside of Ethiopia for the first time ever. They have tons of records, and people love them, and we've definitely dug a few of them, but this is the one, it's magical and timeless and transcendent, super rocking, heavy, groovy, angular, but the sharpest edges, the ones that often poked us in the wrong way, are perfectly dulled by Cora's cello, often transforming the Ex's agit punk into something almost Klezmer. Some of our favorite include the gorgeous "Hidegen Fujnak a Szelek" a reinterpretation of a Hungarian folk song, with soaring female vocals perfectly complimenting the chugging percussive cello. And "State Of Shock" which is probably the heaviest track on the record, starting out all haunting and gypsy, before the band explodes in a squall of howling guitars, and pounding percussion, the cello anchoring the track letting the other instruments go wild.
So goddamn good. As powerful and emotional as ever. If you've resisted the Ex in the past, this might be the ONE Ex record you need, and it's of course an incredible tribute to the memory of Cora and his musical legacy.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It's frustrating sometimes that lots of our all time favorite records came out well before the aQuarius list was established. We occasionally pick old favorites, like Rein Sanction, Archers Of Loaf, Hardship Post, Green River, stuff that's still available, and review them on the list. Cuz as far as we're concerned, released dates and the concept of 'new music' are pretty much useless. All records are new and exciting to someone who has never heard them. But often times those old favorites are long gone and out of print. So when one of those records does finally get reissued, we jump at the chance to be able celebrate and share that amazing music via the list. Which brings us to this double disc reissue from weirdo eco-radical doom drug grinders Exit-13.
A band we have loved for EVER (so much so, Allan even interviewed them for the first issue of his old fanzine, years and years ago), Exit-13 were only loosely a grind band, sure they were fast and furious, guitars buzzed, songs were short and complex, the vocals a monstrous gurgle, the lyrics way political, all about the environment, vegetarianism, etc.� But for a grind band, they sure spent a lot of time spewing huge gory gouts of buzzing doomic plod, as well as incorporating convoluted jazz weirdness, freaked out psychedelic leads, thrashing punk rock, bizarre interludes with croony vocals, skittery rhythms, and noodly guitar jams, bits of angular retard-funk, Black Flag-ish gnarled riffing as well as confusional cut ups, dizzying collages of chopped and recontextualized vocals, Jello Biafra, bits of Jeopardy music, the theme from Underdog, Led Zep pastiche and whatever else they felt like tossing in there.
The best way we can describe it is John Zorn meets diSEMBOWELMENT meets Brutal Truth.
The original discs came with stickers that summed up the Exit-13 sound pretty succinctly:
"Mind warping philosophically contemplative environmental brain food from Pennsylvania's unique smoking grind rock extremists" (from Don't Spare The Green Love) and "An 80 minute head explosion of absolutely unique sonic intelligence from Pennsylvania's environmental grind rock hedonists. This band smokes, bud!" (from Ethos Musick)
Hard to argue with that�
So, High Life collects almost everything the band has ever recorded (minus the ep of '20s and '30s cover songs, all about reefer, sung by the Pain Teens' Bliss Blood): their one proper full length, as well as all of their various singles, eps and splits (previously released as Don't Spare The Green Love). And by now, you've probably realized these guys were all about the pot. The songs buzz by in dense clouds of bong smoke, lots of samples about marijuana, lyrics about legalizing hemp and pot. The back of the booklet even features a huge pot leaf and the "Stop the madness - Legalize Marijuana" legend. But that's only one of their causes, a quick look through the lyrics, reveals a seriously 'green' agenda, environmentalism, vegetarianism, there's even a whole track that's just a snippet of the Phil Donahue show, on which he interviews members of Earth First!
But none of that would mean anything if this band didn't completely slay. And thankfully they do. Heavy and fucked, weird, but weirdly catchy, buzzing and blasting, then pounding and chugging. Furious blasts of blown out lightning fast grind are butted up against lurching doom sludge, peppered with super fucked up free jazz breakdowns. Guitars are serpentine, jagged and angular, the drums go from pound to blast beat and back
the vocals harsh and gurgly, there are bits of weirdly classic rock sounding jams, over sound samples, electronics and Goblin-like keyboards...
"Anthropocentric Ecocidal Conundrum" begins with an insistent folky strum over chirping birds and burbling brook, until the guttural death metal vocals kick in and the drums, then it's some sort of metallic death metal folk freakout, finally morphing into some gnarled convoluted math grind jam. Elsewhere, cool creepy acoustic guitars drift over moaning synths, and splattery drums, super cinematic and haunting on "Only Protest Gives A Hope Of Life". There is plenty of weirdness. Damaged is a descriptor that constantly springs to mind, as does demented, and most certainly fucked. Silly too. But at it's core, this is heavy, heady stuff. Brutal but musical, fierce and fractured, forward thinking and seriously far out.
The second disc is the older stuff, and is at once more furious and thrashing, much more grind, but also has lots more sound samples, songs dotted with all sorts of film snippets, voices, bits of dialogue all tangled up with the growling harsh vocals. "Spare The Wrench Surrender The Earth" is half funeral doom, before launching into a more grinding blast of punk rock. The stuff from the first 7" is almost like old school goregrind, with impossible gurgling loooooow vocals, the guitars a furious blur, the drums a furious splatter. Then there's "Fingernails" hinting at the weirdness to come, with its fake horns, and frog-like croaking super effected vocals, and that classic funeral march melody mixed into the chaotic rrroooaaar.
Any fan of heavy music, be it black, thrash, grind, doom, or sludge should be able to get into these guys. And they're just weird enough to maybe also appeal to the less metal inclined looking for something freaked out and heavy.
An interesting note: like any self-respecting grind band, Exit-13 made a regular practice of releasing records with different versions of the same songs, so the song "Disemboweling Party" appears three different times, while seven other tracks appear twice. But in most cases, the various versions, while not totally different, are varied enough to keep it interesting, even if it's just that one is super hot and in the red, and one is super muddy and lo-fi, or even just that different samples were used.
Our only complaint, is that this is only sort of the complete Exit-13, 'cause they left off the extended, potentially-speaker-damaging noisedrone jams that closed out both their records, the 28 minute "An Electronic Fugue For The Imminent Demise of Planet Earth" from Ethos Musick and the 21 minute "Snakes And Alligators" from the Just A Few More Hits ep. Most of us wouldn't have minded paying a few extra bucks for a third disc, and ruined speakers, but what can you do?
Killer packaging, all the original photos, images, lyrics, quotes and propaganda reproduced in a huge booklet.
Shattered is the posthumous release by this young punky power pop four piece, three of whom were killed in a highway accident driving home to Seattle after a show at the Bottom Of The Hill here in SF on July 17, 2003. This 16-song cd compiles a bunch of unreleased tracks and alternate versions. Really really good retro power pop with lots of guitars and sweet boy gang vocals. Seemingly inspired by the likes of The Buzzcocks, early Elvis Costello and Superchunk, The Exploding Hearts overflowed with raw youthful energetic fun.
Needless to say, listening to this is both utterly heartbreaking and uplifting, but making it even more so is the addition of live video footage of the band performing at the Bottom only hours before the tragic accident. Includes a terrific cover of Paul Collins & The Breakaways' "Walking Out On Love".
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've sort of been inundated with dreamy new sounds from this one man drugblissdrone krautrock revivalist outfit. We're definitely not complaining though. We absolutely can NOT get enough of Expo 70's drawn out guitarscapes, extended spaced out kraut raga drones, churning and pulsing and throbbing, spacey synths and thick rumbling guitars all tangled into haunting sonic transmissions. We're just sort of scrambling to get them all reviewed. So we figured we'd start with this one, the latest, a two track missive that is so dense and layered it might as well be two HUNDRED tracks. Especially since we find ourselves setting the cd player to repeat and just drifting off...
The two tracks here are further examples of Expo 70's washed out space rock SUNNO))) sound, both tracks begin as soft swirls of synth and FX, tripped out and abstract, keening high end, rumbling low end, guitars wiggle and squiggle, all very chaotic but still drone-y and meditative, the first track doesn't deviate too much, the guitars are warm throbs, underpinned by a thick wash of buzzing synth, eventually sloughing off all the FX, leaving just a gorgeous Niblock like minimal drone. But the second track, is quickly subsumed by huge walls of crumbling fuzzed out slow motion riffage, super processed though, so instead of sounding downtuned or even heavy, it just sounds even MORE spacey, and thick and warm and druggy, a single riff, pulled apart and looped over and over and over, super mesmerizing, droning and drifting along through a field of distant fuzz and buzz and warm swaths of subtle synth, eventually fading out leaving nothing but tolling bells... So great.
Packaged in thick textured blue paper mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi.
And as always, these are of course SUPER LIMITED -- just a mere 100 copies, of which we got a majority share! -- and will most likely fly out of here...
About ten years ago, we championed the San Francisco industrial prodigies Factrix via their Artifact 2cd anthology released on Storm, in fact, we made it a Record Of The Week. That went out of print quickly; so we are now quite grateful to Superior Viaduct for at last reissuing two of this band's seminal recordings! Factrix originally manufactured their proto-Wolf Eyes sound in San Francisco some 30+ years ago. The history of underground music on the West Coast in the late '70s is not an easy one to trace. Unlike the punk explosion in England or New York, the influences and disturbances of the musical circuits manifested collusions of ideas that never really fit into the marketable ideas of punk or new wave. Even before those terms were commonplace, California was home to such anomalies in artrock as the Residents and the Los Angeles Free Music Society, who both experimented freely with technology, dadaism, culture jamming, and the detritus of post-psychedelia and bad acid trips. This was the environment that also spawned such genre unfriendly projects as The Screamers, Savage Republic, Non, Survival Research Laboratories, Nervous Gender, Negativland, and - Factrix.
In truth, SF's Factrix belonged to the original Industrial culture of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and Cabaret Voltaire, although their take on transgressive themes and their grim abuse of technology never reached as wide an audience as those icons of Industrial Records. In their short lifespan from 1978 - 1982, Factrix developed a language that clearly rivalled that of their European comrades; but in many ways, Factrix owed their sound to their San Francisco roots, as they inverted the paisley pretenses of psychedelia into a grim seance of sound in which free love became sexual taboos, universal peace became soul-crushing dread, and transcendence became morbidity. This inversion of psychedelia used many of the same tools of Haight-Ashbury in composing through non-structured improvisations as well as through a steady diet of psilocybin mushrooms; but the sound came out all wrong. Factrix devolved '70s pop banalities into dissonant slabs of noise with squiggling guitar feedback and all-encompassing dirges from over-distorted basslines, with a continuous, tinny pulse from an abused drum machine. The process of free association carried over in the vocal duties, which were typically shared amongst the chief protagonists Bond Bergland, Cole Palme, and Joseph Jacobs.
Scheintot was the only studio album from Factrix, originally released on Adolescent Records in 1981. Its dark lysergic murk and obsessive decomposition crawls through scabrous guitars, clanking metal, distorted electronics, shadow-cast vocals and atmospheric doom, certainly paralleling the death-factory churn of TG's Second Annual Report and SPK's Leichenshrei. It must be stated that all of the tracks here (including the cd's two bonus tracks!) were present on the aforementioned Artifact 2cd; but with that long out of print, this becomes a recommended purchase!
About ten years ago, we championed the San Francisco industrial prodigies Factrix via their Artifact 2cd anthology released on Storm, in fact, we made it a Record Of The Week. That went out of print quickly; so we are now quite grateful to Superior Viaduct for at last reissuing two of this band's seminal recordings! Factrix originally manufactured their proto-Wolf Eyes sound in San Francisco some 30+ years ago. The history of underground music on the West Coast in the late '70s is not an easy one to trace. Unlike the punk explosion in England or New York, the influences and disturbances of the musical circuits manifested collusions of ideas that never really fit into the marketable ideas of punk or new wave. Even before those terms were commonplace, California was home to such anomalies in artrock as the Residents and the Los Angeles Free Music Society, who both experimented freely with technology, dadaism, culture jamming, and the detritus of post-psychedelia and bad acid trips. This was the environment that also spawned such genre unfriendly projects as The Screamers, Savage Republic, Non, Survival Research Laboratories, Nervous Gender, Negativland, and - Factrix.
In truth, SF's Factrix belonged to the original Industrial culture of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and Cabaret Voltaire, although their take on transgressive themes and their grim abuse of technology never reached as wide an audience as those icons of Industrial Records, even as Factrix teamed up with fellow San Franciscan provocateur Monte Cazazza for this Spartan yet very caustic live recording. California Babylon was originally released by Subterranean Records back in 1982. There are songs lurking throughout the scalding guitar noise, announced through repetitive, lurching basslines that sound like Flipper tunes played at super slow-motion. Growling slabs of toxic noise, grim electronic murk, tape collages (including some rather diabolical rants from somebody who sounds a lot like Jim Jones), and plenty of guttural No Wave deconstruction spew out from underneath those bass throbs, with Monte Cazazza occasionally spitting his own transgressive venom with his unmistakable, devilish lisp. There's even an appearance from Z'ev on a couple tracks clanking on found metal objects!
The bonus tracks on California Babylon are pretty amazing, we have to say; and all of these were in fact featured on that aforementioned Artifact compilation. On these tracks, the trio was certainly honing their songwriting craft, but they had not eschewed the noise, the murk, nor the bad vibes. "Silver River" is an awesome slab of downer, drone-rock orchestration that could very easily be mistaken for some New Zealand / Expressway gem by Gate or Alastair Galbraith, where "No Trees" reprises Factrix' searing guitar noise with staccato punk vocals and deconstructed post-punk basslines.
The accompanying dvd (which comes only with the cd edition, not the vinyl) features "Night Of The Succubus", the video that was shot at the same California Babylon live recordings. Like Scheintot, California Babylon is an essential document of San Francisco's industrial culture!
The one thing we sometimes really miss after having worked in record stores for years, is that momentary thrill of walking into a store and discovering some band you love has a new record! Hardly ever happens anymore. It's our job to know what's coming out and when, so most of the time we know weeks or months before any record comes out. However, I (Andee) recently had that experience with this very record. That little adrenaline thrill that we were missing so much! If you're an avid reader of the AQ list you may have noticed my massive and gushing review of the last Fallout Boy record, and it's constant presence on my top 10 lists, since the last Fallout Boy record, Take This To Your Grave, holds the distinction of being my most listened to record for the last two years. Seriously, we're talking EVERY DAY. No matter what I was obsessing about that week, some black metal record, or some weird drone thing, I'd always go back to FB at some point. So you can imagine how geeked I was to discover they had a new record. The other surprising thing about this record, is that it debuted at number 9 on the Billboard chart. Holy crap! I can't remember the last time one of my favorite new records was on the Billboard chart AT ALL, let alone in the top 10! But hell, as we've said many times before, we definitely can't complain when songs and bands we like start infiltrating the mainstream. That said, this IS a pretty mainstream sounding record. Big indie emo metallic power pop. But the thing is it's great! Heavy and catchy and immediately memorable, but weird enough that it doesn't get old, even after listening to it multiple times every day, like I've been doing for the last two weeks! Even Jason, who works right across from me and who doesn't necessarily like this kind of stuff, has been forced to hear this record every day as well, and decided he dug it almost immediately. Which is definitely saying something. The first FB record was power-pop-punk in metal clothing. Huge chugging guitars wrapped around perfect pop hooks. Hardcore kids into metal but with hearts of pop and top notch songwriting, fun and funny and complex and practically perfect. This new one tones back the metal guitars just a bit, but makes up for it with much more varied songwriting and even catchier songs. Yep. I didn't think it was possible, but the songs on From Under The Cork Tree are indeed even better and catchier than the songs on Take This To Your Grave, which, had you asked me a few months ago I would have declared, in the voice of Ralph Wiggum, to be UN-POSSIBLE! Totally kick ass, melodically complicated heavy power pop, with complex parts, amazing hooks, weird lyrics and funny song titles ("Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued", "Champagne For My Real Friends, Real Pain For My Sham Friends", "I Slept With Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me"). It's always hard for me to describe a record I like this much. I just want to shake people and yell "Buy this record! Don't ask why! These songs are stuck in my head constantly! It's so good! I don't know why exactly, but I have to listen to this ALL the time! You will LOVE this record!" So, that's it I guess. Consider yourself shook!
Yeah, it's another Fall compilation, and let's get the bitching out of the way first. Probably about half of that Totally Wired compilation of The Fall's Rough Trade days is also found on 50,000 Fall Fans. Everybody is going to find something about this compilation (or The Fall in general) to complain about... but complaining *is* the art of The Fall. With The Fall, you get plenty of sarcasm, misanthropy, bile, animosity, and seething cynicism delivered without any inhibition thanks to a drunken buzz that ringleader Mark E. Smith has kept going for a good part of three decades. Nevertheless, this double disc set is as close as you can get to a "greatest hits" album from The Fall. It is a compendium of The Fall's more listenable facets, with a good number of the ramshackled post-punk crashes from the early Rough Trade albums through the self-indulgent bombast of the Beggars Banquet days in the mid-'80s through their recent work which occasionally flirts with the glories of their past work. If you don't own any Fall albums, this is the perfect place to start!
"Fall In A Hole" is the live album recorded by a young Chris Knox during the band's 1982 New Zealand tour. That means this is vintage Fall, raw and amazing! Includes classic songs such as "Marquis Cha Cha," "The Man Whose Head Expanded" and "Prole Art Threat." The vinyl of this has long been hard to find-- originally 1,500 copies pressed on double vinyl, "Fall in a Hole" never got distributed in the UK because Mark E. "the Fall is me and your grandma on bongos" Smith freaked out that a picture of guitarist Marc Riley (who was booted out of the band right after the tour) was on the cover, leading to a claim that the album was an unauthorized bootleg. The cd version adds a few extra tracks. Warning: the original 4-track reel-to-reel recording definitely sounded, uh, live, and this cd is taken from a vinyl copy as opposed to the original tapes, which spells less-than-ideal fidelity. Still worth having for the snotty, brainy, punk as hell energy documented.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Besides the Sun City Girls, Guided by Voices (in the nineties) and Elton John (in the early seventies) few artists have been as prolific as The Fall. Legendary radio man/music enthusiast/art supporter John Peel once mused that the only thing he feared about death, was that he would miss the newest Fall release. Point blank: HE LOVED THE FALL. And since his BBC weekly radio show always featured a live recording by a band of his choice, he showed his love by featuring The Fall more than any other band EVER. For over 25 years he had The Fall on his show more than the Undertones, more than T-Rex (and everything Marc Bolan), more than any other band. And what's so interesting about The Fall, is that there are so many different versions of the band within that quarter century, shifts in lineup, sound, outlook, but always remaining obviously and distinctly The Fall: the early years, the Brix years, the post Brix "disco" years, the return to form yearsÓ and yet, with every era, Peel was able to capture a rawness and immediacy that, in a way, defined the band better than any of their recordings. Thus, this relatively inexpensive six CD set with 47 page booklet is a true treasure. Not all the hits are re-recorded here, but each and every version of the band is represented and the sessions scream off of each cd with a freshness that will certainly and permanently convert any non-Fall enthusiast and cause any and all Fall enthusiasts to stay indoors listening for the next month or two. Beware...some of the versions of your favorite Fall songs are blissfully extended and completely twisted and there just may be some songs you have not heard elsewhere. This box set is a must-have item (right up there with the Stooges' Funhouse Box).
ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL double-disc collection of cerebral low-brow art punk masterpieces. These tracks are culled from the tumultuous Rough Trade years (1980-83), when every record The Fall put out was a work of total genius. "Totally Wired" has almost every track from the "Palace of Swords Reversed" lp, which compiled their early singles, but includes album tracks from "Grotesque" and "Perverted By Language" as well. This era was the high point of Mark E. Smith's merciless skewering of the english language and English culture, perfectly backed by brilliantly ramshackle pop deconstructions. Single riff mastery, early keyboard dickery, anti-imperialist ranting, time travelling tales, primitively demented but danceable bass lines-- all part of The Fall's impeccable post-punk package. "Totally Wired" is by no means a comprehensive look at The Fall's massive recorded outlook, or even at their early years ("Dragnet" and "Live at the Witch Trials" are two great records from before they were on Rough Trade), but damn if it doesn't have a giant chunk of their very best songs. Mark E. may still drag himself around making mediocre records, but let that not muddy the legacy of The Fall. This stuff is just too fucking amazing!
Beijing Hardcore!!! Or, at least, that's the title of one of the six tracks on this 7", from China. Others include "Chaos Now!" and "Garbage".
We were gonna try, but we just can't do it... we can't... First release from this local band, and it's a doozy, heavy as fuck, chaotic and unhinged with a wild maniacal frontwoman, but, and it's a big BUT (pun most certainly intended)... Farticus? Maybe the worst band name ever. And that's coming from a store who has always championed Cream Abdul Babar!! Come on guys, you're dooming yourself to a life of local band-dom, of being perpetually a joke band, no matter how kick ass you are. And trust us, we know, we have spent time in bands with terrible names, embarrassing names, even scatological names, but somehow none quite as bad as Farticus. Plus, embracing the name, by having your logo be a shitting woman, all your song titles puerile and scatological and goofy, it definitely makes it hard to get to the music, but once you do, holy shit, these four songs are intense and brutal, tons of low end, the guitars chugging and churning, occasionally getting all twisted and warped, evoking prime era Butthole Surfers, the drums pounding and chaotic, and the vocals, shit, a wild banshee screech, sounding like a Riot Grrl all grown up ready to kick your ass. Reminds us a bit of classic SF weirdo rockers, Tragic Mulatto, in fact, if you can imagine the Buttholes, Tragic Mulatto, but with Unsane guitars, that's what this is all about.
Apparently the live shows are insane, the vocalist mobbed by men AND woman, all grinding their faces into her pelvis, the band obviously are totally capable of destroying, so it's definitely worth it to try and make it past all the non musical stuff, the name, the song titles, the artwork on the cd, cuz once you strap on the headphones and close your eyes, this stuff will pummel you gloriously and utterly. At least in your iTunes you can change the band name and song titles and just enjoy the music. Reservedly recommended. If these guys revamped their aesthetic, and of course changed their name, they would be unstoppable.
Over the past few years, aQuarius pal, music obsessive, and multi-instrumentalist Monte Cimino has brought us many interesting releases of dirgey postmetal heaviness (Burial Tree), ambient drone (Time Spent), kosmiche bliss (Dark Matter Halo), and experimental new age noise (When Prophecy Fails). Now here's a demo disc from a new project he's in. Named after actor Michael Fassbender (??), this is a band playing not ambient noise nor brooding postrock, but instead straight up HARDCORE! A la '80s crossover acts like DRI and SOD. Aggro, metallic, fast and loud. Six songs in seven minutes. Monte plays guitar in this five piece, which also features members of local power violence unit Venkman and globetrotting punk vets Conquest For Death.
It's very moshable, raging stuff, that slows up for some nice heavy breakdowns. Not sure what they're all pissed off about (though one song is called "Fuck You, Hipster") but they are definitely working up a sweat here ripping somebody a new one. And they've obviously got a sense of humor too. If you liked the Iron Reagan we listed last time, you'll dig this as well.
No frills packaging, a plain ol' cd-r in a plastic sleeve, with black & white xeroxed cover and insert with their scrawled notes for the drummer on how these songs are supposed to be played.
FYI, if you're local and want to check 'em out live, Fassbender will be playing a Southern Lord showcase gig at the Knockout on October 21st...
Sometimes some good old fashioned 'rock math' is the best way to start a review... Imagine Rhode Island spazz-rock duo Lightning Bolt, via Japanese hyper-prog heavies Ruins, mix in a little Hella, maybe some Crom-Tech and some Flying Luttenbachers, and then filter it all through the cartoon music of Carl Stalling, but don't stop there, this drums/keyboard duo also lace their sprawling drum-synth duels with stretches of gorgeously creepy Carpenter-ish synth soundtrackery, and bizarre samples, sometimes locking into churning sprawls of krautish hypno-rock, and other times exploding into shards of what almost sounds like Venetian Snares style drill & bass. Thankfully, there's more to Fat32 than pointless ADD mathiness, with the songs displaying a surprising knack for melody and groove, and cleverly hiding proper songs amidst all the genre stutter and controlled chaos. That said, this is still the sort of head spinning, ultra acrobatic musicianship that makes Fat32 sound right at home on Web Of Mimicry, alongside outfits like Secret Chiefs 3, Estradasphere and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, although sonically these guys do tend more toward the metal/punk side of the spectrum. Just check out the sample below for "Hard Drive", which might be the best of the bunch, a dizzying, super hypnotic blast of hyper rhythmic metallic pound, the Lightning Bolt vibe in full effect, but the keyboard gives Fat32 a much more expansive sonic palette, letting the keys somehow supply both the buzzing synth riffage, as well as blasts of 8-bit video game squiggles, all sort of effects and constantly morphing tangled melodies, the sound shifting frenetically from looped metallic mesmer to pounding chugging heaviness and back again. Then there's the epic 17 minute closer, which displays the group's Naked City like mastery of genre hopping, and the same sort of desire to cram it all into one song, and they pull it off, with most of the track pounding mathily, but they pepper it with squalls of psychedelic shimmer, bloopy video game goofiness, Pantera vocal samples (!), lumbering downtuned doominess, cheesy organ grinding polka, wide open stretches of abstract free noise drift, droned out textures and layers, super angular math-punk and plenty more. Fans of any or all of the above mentioned bands will dig for sure...
What really needs to be said about Fear? One of the greatest punk bands ever. Have you ever seen the Decline of Western Civilization? Fear definitely stole the show with their fierce and frenzied audience baiting set. And then there's the time they played on Saturday Night Live at the behest of none other than John Belushi, where they were introduced by Donald Pleasance, and eventually caused over $20,000 in damage. But all that rabble rousing would be nothing but bullshit posturing if they didn't have the music to back it up. And Fear's The Record, released in 1982, said it all, a pretty much perfect punk rock record all the way through, fierce and fucked up, weirdly proggy, frantic and frenzied, politicized and irreverent, vocalist Lee Ving's over the top growled vocals leading the charge.
"Let's Have A War" is a punk rock anthem if there ever was one, with its "there's so many of us" repeated bridge and its woozy tribal verse that almost sounds like the Butthole Surfers. Then there's the goofy and tasteless "Beef Bologna", with its crooned bluesy intro, the song itself a minute of pounding punk anthem. "Camarillo" is an unsung classic, as powerful as any of the tracks on The Record, with some weird angular guitaring, some very metal riffage, not to mention some seriously Jello-like vocals. But it has to be "I Don't Care About You" that steals the show, heavy and hooky and punk as fuck with a chorus that kills, and c'mon "I Don't Care About You FUCK YOU!!" Doesn't get more punk than that, does it?
The rest of the record is overflowing with classics, the ridiculous but impossibly catchy (and very Dead Kennedys sounding) "New York's Alright If You Like Saxophones", which of course is rife with actual saxophones, and the lyrics are hilarious. "We Destroy The Family" is fierce and furious and peppered with weird metal percussion, "I Love Livin' In The City" is somehow WAY poppier than it has any right to be
Fear were one of those rare punk bands that infused their punk with plenty of pop hooks, and had serious song writing chops, all without losing any of their punkness, yet somehow making their music eminently more listenable, and making them way more accessible to folks outside the punk scene, think the Dickies, Bad Religion, The Descendents
Available on vinyl again, but whatever format, this is an essential document of West Coast punk rock, and one of our favorite punk rock records EVER.
Yeah, the band is called Fetus Eaters. And their particular brand of metallic grind is called vomitcore, which for a particular strain of weirdo music obsessives, is pretty much all it should take to get you interested in these musical misanthropes. And for those who might be put off, well, odds are this is not your cup of black bloody fetus laced tea. But for the rest of you, this is some primo grind-metal heaviness, replete with furious blast beats, wild shredding guitars, insectoid riffing, twisted effects heavy vocals, lots of warped production and processing, and yeah of course plenty of weird samples. Full length number five finds the band slightly more polished, but really only slightly, it's still raw and blown out, punk as fuck, super noisy, and downright psychedelic at times, most of the songs clocking in around the minute mark, which is more than enough to cram in loads of tangled shreddery and blasting headbanging crunch, with the occasional foray into lumbering doominess, face melting noise rock, and grim black buzz, but really, FE are grinders at heart, and a quick listen to "Fetal Sushi Delight" or "Embryonic Chow" of "I'll Snap Your Spine" makes that pretty clear. Not sure why we never listed anything by these guys before, cuz we're digging this big time. Anyone into the various strains of grind, from old school grind, to grinding death metal, to gore grind, to just flat out WTF grind weirdness, might find themselves surprisingly into 'vomitcore' all of a sudden, and fear not, we're right there with you.
Pressed on bloody red vinyl, includes a printed insert/lyric sheet/poster.
Another killer heavy rock outfit from down under. Grey Daturas, Whitehorse, Agents Of Abhorrence, Striborg... In fact it was AQ faves Whitehorse who had been telling us about these guys for a while now, but it wasn't until quite recently that we finally managed to get in touch with them and get our hands on some of their music. And boy are we glad we did. Their label is called We Clear Rooms, which besides being a killer name, gives you a hint as to what you're in for. We were expecting some Whitehorse styled sludge and pummel, and while Fire Witch do indeed bring the noise with plenty of heaviness, they are a bit more moody and melodically subtle. Drums pound, guitars growl and roar, but there are long stretches of moody meandering, dreamy drift, in between the bouts of furious psychedelic freakouts. Two tracks, two versions of the same song. The first is an instrumental epic, a cross between Pelican and Khanate, just the right balance of head caving sludge and minor key post rock, slow building, lots of dynamics, expansive and grand, a massive grooving post sludge psychrock blow out. The second, lengthier track sonically resembles the first, but immediately strikes out on its own, WAY free-er tangent. the drums are way more spread out, the rhythms are much more abstract, the feel is much more plodding and glacial, guitars don't riff so much as they slither and scrape and squeak, a creepy soundscape of strange guitar sounds and a massive layer of low end rumble, letting the drums sit right up front where they belong, alternating between slow motion crush and complex tribalism, the drums offer up a densely woven world of pound and pummel, a tangled web of strangely shifting rhythms, over a blown out psychedelic swirl. Killer!
And the packaging, HOLY SHIT! Super deluxe origami style silkscreened fold-out sleeve wrapped in a vellum slip case. The disc is printed and sits inside beneath a clear plastic insert, beneath yet another printed insert and with a miniature reproduction of an old show flyer where they played with the Grey Daturas. Cool. The packaging says this was limited to "around 100 copies" but according to the band, these are the last 30, that they had been saving specifically for us!
One of the most unsung midwest hardcore bands of the (very) early 80's, Lansing, Michigan's The Fix bludgeoned and bloodied every eardrum in earshot way back in those halcyon days when "Midwest Rules" was the credo amongst many of the early Touch & Go bands.
As it turns out, The Fix records are some of the hardest (and priciest) to come across so as part of the recent 25th. anniversary Touch & Go celebration (congrats, btw) we see the reissue of this "hardcore 101 primer" compiling both 7"s, various comp singles, session outtakes and live tracks.
Included are some swell "back in the day" liner notes from Byron Coley, Mr. Hank Rollins, Thurston Moore & Tesco Vee. Any band that has that foursome singing their praises has got to be pretty fucking fearsome.
The Fix lasted less than two years, and a few of the members ended up starting an amazing band called Blight (a killer re-issue reviewed here a while back) who also burnt out pretty fast, but the legacy of these bands still occupies a unique niche in the history of American Hardcore.
No band these days, no matter how 'punk', would ever be able to recreate these sorts of sounds and emotions, it was a special time, where emotional music wasn't just some Hot Topic Emo (TM) brand, but a lifestyle, full of real anger and frustration and desperation, the sounds of true, dead end, teenage angst.
